Name: Prime Obsession
ISBN: 9780452285255

Prime Obsession

The definitive story of the Riemann Hypothesis, a fascinating and epic mathematical mystery that continues to challege the world. In 1859, Bernhard Riemann, a little-known thirty-two year old mathematician, made a hypothesis while presenting a paper to the Berlin Academy titled “On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity.” Today, after 150 years of careful research and exhaustive study, the Riemann Hyphothesis remains unsolved, with a one-million-dollar prize earmarked for the first person to conquer it. Alternating passages of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of elegantly composed biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world.

What Hacker News says

daoboyJul 2026

Although the author turned out to be a fairly despicable person, Prime Obsession is an absolutely wonderful book on this subject.

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black6May 2024

Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer"

Cicero's "How to Grow Old"

John Derbyshire's "Prime Obsession"

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pseudolusJan 2021

+1 for the 3blue1brown recommendation. Between the two, a non-mathematician can acquire a layperson's comprehension of the Riemann Hypothesis. Additionally, John Derbyshire (of the unfortunate views regarding race) wrote a very good book "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" that covered both historical and mathematical aspects of the Riemann Hypothesis [0].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Prime-Obsession-Bernhard-Greatest-Mat...

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EnginerrrdNov 2020

Riemann Sums != Riemann Hypothesis. That said, there is a decent book for the layman on RH: "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics"

https://www.amazon.com/Prime-Obsession-Bernhard-Greatest-Mat...

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pjungwirJul 2020

I thought of a few others that are "fun":

- The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

- Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson

- Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries by Marvin Jay Greenberg (a textbook, but an easy one to read on your own)

- Gödel's Proof by Nagel and Newman (best if he can read it with a partner and talk through the steps)

- Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire

Some of those have already been mentioned, but consider this another vote for them. :-)

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black6Sep 2019